X-Men: Forever #1 - Letterless Preview/Gillen Interview

[JB]

https://www.looper.com/1518762/marve...n-krakoan-era/

[JB]

[NewMutant]

Fall of X has made me not like the costume changes. It makes continuity look sloppy. If Cyclops in his OG uniform for the trial (which is mentioned in dialogue even) then he should be wearing that costume. Another mix was Polaris in "Trial of Magneto" (no trial). It was lame to give Polaris ANOTHER new uniform and I wish Wolverine and the boys were wearing the Krakoan uniforms to close out the era in FoTHoX.

[Uncanny X-Man]

Maresca's art looks really good here and even more refined than on the recent Children of the Vault mini. I'm very hyped for this and I expect it to be essential reading for the Krakoa finale.

[IN-a-Synch]

Jesus more Sinister???

[Triniking1234]

Jesus more Sinister???

Did you forget Gillen was still writing this? lol

[JB]

How do you see Jean's identity and the nature of her relationship with the Phoenix? What was it like seeing Mark Brooks' bloody cover with Jean?

Somebody needs to mop.

In the same way, "X-Men: Forever" is what's gone, to begin with, "X-Men: Forever" is what happened in the gap, as in, how the hell has Xavier [gotten] his team together? How the hell did he get Rasputin? And all those ... What is [Charles] Xavier trying to do? That's what "X-Men: Forever" starts as. And then it very rapidly by issue two becomes the dovetailing, secret history. It's like the white-hot ribbon side. In other words, the Jean side, the Phoenix side. We've seen what's happened to Jean at the end of "Immortal X-Men." We've seen the visions that Scott's having in "Fall of the House of X. What's really going on with Jean? And, of course, the cover implies there's a lot of blood involved in this particular moment, and it's one of these weird things when I end up plotting it's like, "Oh no, Jean's absolutely key to it," but she's also like the holy grail, the whole holy grail, the blood of the holy grail, all these Arthurian aspects.

This only occurred to me now, actually. Obviously, with Exodus and Hope, there are two warriors — not heroes, warriors — in the desert on a quest. There's that, you know what I mean? And Jean takes the holy grail aspect in that way, so by the end of "X-Men: Forever," I can't see any universe [where] we don't put that cover on the trade. Do you know what I mean? Jean grows and grows, and then consuming the book is the best way of putting it. I don't want to say much more than that, but Jean could not be more important to the book, but we built towards there because she is it; she's the holy grail, she's the thing that's being sought, the thing that's trying to find unity if you will.

Was it intentional to tell a story regarding a potentially universe-consuming AI consuming the world with Enigma and how that reflects the real world regarding art and technology?

Good question. Be careful what you write. This is one thing I will say about John. This was explicitly in John's story early on; that's already John's story. He's done a story about AI. That's literally what happens in "Powers of X." They come down, and are we going to upload the entire human race or all the AI, whatever's left? That as in, if you go and reread those issues, you'll realize John knows this stuff because this thing about John is he's a proper science fiction writer. I can't say that, so that's a really good example of me picking up stuff that John already had in the story, but I would also be lying if I didn't fine-tune it as we've gone in. It's explicit. Some of the phrases I'm obviously using when Enigma talks are phrases that people use to talk about AI modeling and the large language model stuff.

I'm using the terminology to heighten it because stuff that could be a big random cosmic idea, which is classic Marvel stuff, which can be quite distant if it's cosmic ideas and quite vague and highfalutin, they're not highfalutin. Big things are made of small things. That's part of the AI learning thing. There's a lot of process there, so doing stuff to basically help ground it. I hope that the ultimate twist is if AI is defeated in the comic, usually the next issue, we all get sacked to get replaced by AI writers. They'll be like, "Oh no, it's a twist."

Where does Engima rank among the threats the X-Men have faced?

It's complicated. Trust me. Enigma could go back and squish your brain in four days. He'd kill your great, great, great, great grandparents the second you say a word against him. In fact, you wouldn't even get a chance to say a word because he would go forward, see you're going to say a word, then go back — that kind of stuff.

Enigma is really good at what Enigma does. Enigma also has the problem of having a certain intellect, being the fact that most of the Dominions are made of lots of things, whilst Enigma is a very powerful Dominion actually, but made out of one thing guiding it. He lacks the breadth of some Dominions, I think, intellectually because he's a monster.

[JB]

Jesus more Sinister???

Yeah this should be the conclusion of the Sinister stuff. Hopefully they all perish in battle. Every single one of them.

[Alex.]

God, I'm tired of Sinister. He is everywhere. He is here, spoilers:

on the new animated show, on the wolverine game

end of spoilers

[ChronoRogue]

I'm usually not one for character regression, but god Charles walking and using TK is taking me so out. I know he's been doing this the whole era, but it feels most egregious here when he's threatening someone with telekinesis. It sounds messed up, but I'm looking forward to the 90s nostalgia setting some things back.

Anyway, the art looks decent and hope the Sinister clones get what is coming to them.

[DarkMagnus]

Hope the Sinister suffer in a very horrid way.

[Dante Milton]

The art looks really nice, but honestly, I have just completely checked out of this moment of X-Men comics. Besides RoM, it's all so uninteresting and I'm bored, and despite being very uncertain and unenthused about what may come next, I'm ready for this to be over.

[Steroid]

While I'm sick of all of the Sinisters, I do very much enjoy seeing one of them getting punched.

[RAWRlrus]

I wonder if they're trying to set up a way for MR to stick around after Krakoa ends. I'm assuming Stasis and Stellaris don't know Engima came to be.

I'm usually not one for character regression, but god Charles walking and using TK is taking me so out. I know he's been doing this the whole era, but it feels most egregious here when he's threatening someone with telekinesis. It sounds messed up, but I'm looking forward to the 90s nostalgia setting some things back.

Anyway, the art looks decent and hope the Sinister clones get what is coming to them.

I honestly hope they just retcon or ignore power ups. Such a bad idea IMO.

[ChronoRogue]

I honestly hope they just retcon or ignore power ups. Such a bad idea IMO.

Same. They could explain the Krakoa era power-ups as a product of the resurrection protocols I suppose, so everything turns back to normal.